In rarely seen images from the Arctic, Atlantic walruses, vital to
Inuit culture, nurse calves and battle polar bears.

Arctic sunlight bathes Canada’s Foxe Basin, where bodies clumsy
on land swim with fluent grace. This fleeting glimpse at Atlantic
walruses was hard earned. Equipment failures and impossible weather
doomed my initial attempts to photograph these notoriously difficult
subjects. In 1994, four trips to the Arctic yielded only one productive
shooting day. But when I traveled to Igloolik in Canada’s Nunavut
territory in 2000, I often found seas smooth as blue glass. Two Inuit
guides adroitly kept our 23-foot (7-meter) boat away from dangerous
currents that could have wedged us between crushing ice floes. I was
rewarded with rarely photographed scenes of polar bears attacking
walrus herds and walrus females bestowing tender care on calves just
hours old.

Walruses can dive 300 feet (90 meters) to feed on the ocean floor for
as long as 12 minutes before surfacing. Weighing an average of 2,000
pounds (900 kilograms), they have enormous appetites. Stiff whiskers
help locate clams and other shellfish, which they hold with their lips
to suck out the soft tissue. Predators, including humans, killer
whales, and polar bears, attack walruses—but at their own peril.
Tusks reach some three feet (0.9 meters) and are brandished with such
lethal force that polar bears rarely take on adults. Bears were always
on our minds, however—and with good reason. Once I was caught
flat-footed as a white giant galloped straight at me. I grabbed my
camera and ran toward our tent 900 feet (275 meters) away. The bear
passed by, plunged into a walrus herd, and made a kill.

Atlantic walruses were seriously depleted after centuries of wholesale
slaughter by commercial ships, which harvested blubber for oil and
tusks for ivory. The animals today number between 10,000 and 50,000,
far below the Pacific population of more than 200,000. Thanks to the
United States’ Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the Atlantic
population is growing. Inuit can legally hunt them, but each family is
allowed only four kills a year.

The walrus is tightly intertwined with the Inuit culture, providing
food as well as skin and bone for clothing, shelter, tools, and
weapons. If hunters kill a walrus during the summer months, they will
cut out the stomach, bury it until winter, then dig it up and feast on
it as a delicacy. I politely declined offers of Inuit food. Instead I
stuck to instant noodles, chocolate bars, and a feast of photographic
wonders.

In More to Explore the National Geographic magazine team shares some of its best sources and other information. Special thanks to the Research Division.

All living walruses belong to a single species: Odobenus rosmarus.
Odobenus, the first—or generic —name, is derived from Greek
terms meaning “tooth walker” or “one who walks on his
teeth.” Early observations of walruses using their upper canine
teeth, or tusks, to help hoist their bodies out of the water, climb up
rocky slopes, or scramble over slippery ice, certainly explain the
origins of this name. The second—or specific —name,
rosmarus, is derived from an assortment of Scandinavian names for the
walrus, for example rosval and rosm.